Dan56

Glad to hear your vertigo is better... I've heard that dumping some hydrogen peroxide in your ears helps prevent it, apparently the bubbling action helps loosen excessive inner ear wax to where it can be swabbed out (physician heal thyself). Nonbelievers would say that the problem 'naturally' resolved itself, but like you, I believe God hears and answers. I wonder though, if you were still experiencing dizzy spells, would your faith be shaken?

"You shall neither take revenge from nor bear a grudge against the members of your people; you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord." (Leviticus 19:18 & Torah) "The stranger who sojourns with you shall be as a native from among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord, your God." (Leviticus 19:34)

Define good? If all righteousness resides in God, then how is God not good?

Being told your a good person may not be much different than being told your a bad person, consider the source. Usually when someone else showers you with compliments, watch your wallet, or get ready for that second shoe to drop. Your generally characterized as 'good' when you give to others and compliment others, but offer some constructive criticism or refuse a favor, and all of the sudden your a horrible, rude, and insensitive person. Helping others and having compassion towards others is good, and they'll tell you so, but sometimes saying 'No' and refusing to help another person is the right thing to do, but they'll call you a bad person. For myself and within my belief, if God is pleased with us, then we must have done something good. Our own perception of good and bad can deviate, what we define as 'good' often stems from self-interest. Being good is doing what is right, but what's right differs from person to person. JMO

I'd ask the people who are saying that your a bad person to give you some specific reasons of why they're claiming that your bad... If they can't give you any specific examples of bad things you've done, then I'd ignore their opinion. Don't let others define your character, their motivation may not have anything to do you. Sometimes people manipulate the conscience of others through criticism, but its to promote their own self-interest. Its the "poor me" attitude, their life isn't perfect and they want you to think that your a bad person for not helping them. Remember, Jesus was nailed to a cross because others didn't appreciate him, but that doesn't mean he was a bad person.

Thanks for the explanation.. It sounds like your just saying; "Be nice to others".. I agree with treating others nice and respecting their right to believe whatever they choose, but I just didn't comprehend how it would be possible to "Heal every heart, Provide every need, & Produce every blessing". That obviously can't be done by offering everyone a Coke and a smile. I don't think that being nice, polite, and respectful towards others is equivalent to healing or blessing them, but is rather just common courtesy that all civilized people should extend to one another.

I think that your intent is good, but somewhat over-reaching. I know that you were just quoting the following, but I just doubt that any human could or should endeavor to lay all that pressure on themselves. "Heal every heart. Honor every person's truth. Adore every person's God. Provide every person's needs. Presume every person's holiness. Produce every person's blessing." I said "impossible" because I don't believe any person has the ability to heal every heart. How do you honor a truth that's false? If you believe a persons truth is false, and you honor it, your honoring a lie. I believe in one God (monotheism), so adoring every persons God would be idolatry, not to mention hypocritical. How do you provide every persons needs when billionaires can't do that? I believe God is Holy, not people. I personally don't see anything wrong with anger. Anger which is properly channeled, directed, and controlled can be a productive emotion. God gets angry and Jesus got angry. If nothing ever rattles a person and nothing ever bothers a person, doesn't that person equally accept good and evil? To never object or show any anger over someones wrong-doing, is not the definition of showing love for that person. The absence of anger can be reflective of an absence of principles and values. Show me a person who never gets mad or upset, and I'll show you a person who doesn't care about anything or anyone. I agree to the extent that people with out-of-control tempers are best handled with straight-jackets and anger management classes. But "anger" itself is a necessary emotion and I think it can be unhealthy to try and suppress it. Everyone judges, its how we come to determinations, and everyone is intolerant of certain things. If a person is intolerant of nothing, they most likely stand for nothing. Just my opinion of course.

Impossible

We do have access to the answers of life, but the problem is, no one believes the answers. People seldom accept what they can't intellectualize for themselves. God explaining the intricacies of creation to us is tantamount to us explaining algebra to a cat. We know that from nothing, nothing comes. So, if there were ever a time when there was absolutely nothing in existence, then nothing would have ever come into existence. But things do exist. Therefore, since there could never have been absolutely nothing, something had to have always been in existence. That ever-existing thing is God. God is the uncaused Being that caused everything else to come into existence. God is the uncreated Creator who created the universe and everything in it.

This is true... Happiness is a state of being, its an attitude. Contentment comes from inner peace and is less influenced by circumstance. You don't need to be happy to be content, and happiness is not necessarily derived from a state of contentment. I think if your a depressed, sad, and miserable person when your poor, and then you win a lottery and become rich, your still going to be a depressed and sad person, you just won't be miserable anymore.

Joy, gladness, contentment.... the opposite of sad. They say that happiness is not achieved by any means of "success", but I've noticed that when people achieve success, they appear to be pretty happy, at least temporarily. So happiness is derived from getting what you want. In other words, money buys happiness. Agitating Dan? I'm relatively positive that your just confused Although I guess being a troublemaker can bring a person a certain amount of joy and satisfaction? We all get our thrills where we can. Obstacles just annoy me... So its not achieving the goal that satisfies you, but the struggle getting there?

Absolutely not, but I am convinced that certain church fathers tampered with scripture. I am one of those conservatives who agree that the KJV is the most accurate, as demonstrated by similar links that I posted. There are a few mistranslated words in the KJV, like "Easter", but all-in-all, there's no deliberate altercations or corruption. *A Bible that’s falling apart usually belongs to someone who isn’t.*

I don't remember where I picked-up that quote, but it was just a coincidence that you previously quoted nearly the same thing. I think the only quote I stole from you was; "When things get tense around here, and they do, I ask myself 3 questions: Was I on time? Am I doing the job? Am I getting along with the people? If the answer to all 3 questions is 'Yes," then I relax." A prescription for happiness no doubt.. Its good to see that at least 3 members on this forum consider themselves happy. I almost feel guilty for not being depressed and miserable

Satan misquoted scripture when he tempted Christ in Matthew 4:6, he slightly twisted Psalms 91: 11&12. Satan as the Serpent also contradicted the first rule God gave to Adam and Eve. So is it surprising that the adversary of the written Word would seek to pollute it by changing a jot or tittle here and there? I'm a bit surprised myself to see you and Michael adamantly defending the infallibility of the Catholic bible. One minute your attacking the errancy and corrupt agenda of the church fathers, while concurrently attesting that their translations are preferable to everything else? I suspect your both secretly die-hard Catholics Greek Textus Receptus- A CWM publication EXAMINING the TOUGH ISSUES

Well, we're talking about centuries of early church father corruption, so its hard not to jump around when weeding out all the culprits. To keep it simple, Origen is right up there with Eusebius as a heretic imo. Bottomline, I personally don't trust the corrupt Alexandrian texts. I believe the reliable text stream comes from the Antioch line. My original purpose was to simply explain my preference for the KJV, because it was produced from the Majority text (Masoretic Text & Textus Receptus) and not a product influenced by the church fathers. This guy pretty much summarizes how I feel about it; David Berman And here's another site I just found that crystallizes my thoughts on the subject; TEXTUAL CORRUPTIONS

ARE YOU HAPPY? ARE YOU CONTENT? Just curious whether people consider themselves to be happy, sad, or both, depending on what day you ask them.. I am personally happy, but seldom content. I am content in what I believe, but not usually satisfied in where I'm at in life. I'm not sure its a good thing to be content, because it might mean that you want for nothing better and an attitude like that might bring all progress & growth in life to a screeching halt? Anyhow, if your happy, how did you get there? Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be. ~Abraham Lincoln Happiness? That's nothing more than health and a poor memory. ~Albert Schweitzer As people spin faster and faster in the pursuit of personal happiness, they become exhausted in the futile effort of chasing themselves. The happiness of most people is not ruined by great catastrophes or fatal errors, but by the repetition of slowly destructive little things. Unhappiness is not knowing what we want and killing ourselves to get it. Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for. You need to learn to be happy by nature, because you'll seldom have the chance to be happy by circumstance.

That's pretty much the end-all argument for bible non-believers. They don't agree with Paul, so he had to have been a fake apostle....Peter agreed with Paul and endorsed his letters? So obviously, anything Peter wrote had to have been a forgery. Mark's gospel was tampered with, John didn't write The Gospel of John or Revelation, etc. etc. The problem is that after you throw out everything you don't agree with, there's nothing left... Which means liberals really believe in nothing biblical. I think your confusing the Byzantine manuscripts with the Alexandrian translations. Constantine was dead and had no influence over the majority text (Textus Receptus). Gnostic corruption occurred before the council at Nicea, this was a separate issue and it was what Irenaeus battled against long before Eusebius compiled the NT from the minority text for Constantine.

Don't worry, I've never been offended by anyone in my life.... I don't know specifically what you disagreed with, but it sounds like you believe the church fathers were faithful in delivering uncorrupted scripture. I personally disagree, and am convinced that some 3rd century church fathers intentionally misconstrued the manuscripts. They were Clement of Alexandria, Origen and Eusebius. Constantine commissioned Eusebius to prepare 50 copies of the bible, these are the main source for the corruptions we see today, they were the result of the work of Origen and Eusebius. Later, Westcott and Hort made some 5000 changes to the “Revised Greek Text” of 1881, I cited some of those changes in an earlier post. All the changes were based on the Alexandrian manuscripts (Vaticanus and Sinaiticus), basically a Vatican manuscript. It may be funny, but it is also a historical truth, I've already done extensive research on it.

IMO, Paul explained the New Covenant and his letters were confirmation of everything Jesus himself taught. Although Peter disagreed with Paul (at first) about taking the gospel to the gentiles, he later endorsed Paul after God revealed to Peter that the gentiles were not unclean. "Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction" (2 Peter 3:15&16) -NIV.

If Spong asserts that the bible can not be taken literally, if Spong prescribes that the integrity of the bible is not relevant to 21st century readers, and if Spong insist that the apostle Paul was not representative of God's word, then it certainly sounds like Spong is promoting the irrelevance of the bible? How can he consistently attack every aspect of a book while simultaneously espousing its credibility?

Do a little research on Irenaeus, he spend much of his life dealing with the gnostic heresy. Of his two writings that still exist, the best known is "Against Heresies", a work consisting of five books dealing with gnosticism. Until the discovery of Gnostic texts at Nag Hammadi in 1946, most information about gnosticism came to us through Irenaeus. This is accurate and grounded in historical truth.

The Byzantine text is more attested to by the early church fathers. In their writings, these church fathers included practically all the New Testament minus a handful of verses. If we lost all Greek manuscripts of the NT we could in all probability build it up from the Church Fathers. Their writings overwhelmingly favour the Byzantine readings (Textus Receptus). Example; the Vaticanus or Sinaiticus do not include Mark 16:9-20, but Justin Martyr in 151 AD quotes the last verse; Irenaeus quotes and comments on verse 19, in 180 AD; Hippolytus quotes verses 17-18 in 190-227 AD; Vincentius also 17-18 in 256 AD. So early church fathers quoted verses that were obviously omitted from the Alexandrian codex's. The earliest manuscripts from Greece and Asia Minor, the leading areas of the postapostolic church, were Byzantine, and they were copied from earlier Byzantine manuscripts now lost. Alexandria was a major center of gnosticism, a religious/philosophical movement that corrupted early Christianity. When we look at the variants in the Alexandrian texts, we find that their gnostic leanings tend to portray Jesus Christ as neither divine nor having come in the flesh as a physical human being. This is why I trust the more reputable Byzantine scribes, evidence demonstrates more faithfulness in the copying process.

Your presuming that the older existing text were spot-on correct, but its my contention (belief) that the Alexandrian codex's which you trust to be accurate, were in fact altered by Origen and Eusebius, and later by the revisions of Westcott and Hort. Look-up what these guys believed in and you'll better understand what motivated them to tamper with the manuscripts. And keep in mind that the NIV bible is representative of the work by Westcott and Hort. I agree with the examples of verses you provided to show corruption, but vice-versa, where the divinity of Christ is restore to what the original manuscripts surely taught. Samples; King James. Matt. 18:11 For the Son of man is come to save that which was lost. N.I.V. Removed King James Luke 2:33 And Joseph and his mother marvelled at those things which were spoken of him. N.I.V. The child's father and mother marveled at what was said about him. Note: Joseph was not the Father of Jesus. Jesus was conceived of the Holy Spirit. King James Mark 11:26 But if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses. N.I.V. It is missing King James Bible- Mark 11:26 “But if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses.” Now go look that important memory verse up in your N.I.V. It will be easy to remember because it is missing! Regarding 1 John 5:7-8, Erasmus omitted this reading from his first 2 editions of his Greek NT (1516, 1519) and was challenged for this omission. He replied that he would include it in his next edition if anyone could produce even one Greek manuscript that included that reading. One 16th century Greek minuscule was found, a 1520 manuscript, so he inserted it into his 1522 edition. The Johannie comma (1 John 5: 7-8) is contained in practically all of the extant Latin Vulgate MSS. Although not included in Jerome's original edition, around the year 800 it was taken into the text of the Vulgate from the Old Latin MSS. We know of at least ten Greek MSS that contain the Johannie comma, it is cited by several sources prior to 500AD. I agree, the church fathers manufactured their own rendition which strayed from the truth, but I also believe the truth was preserved by the true church, of which the original letters were sent.

IMO, Origen was a heretic, along with Westcott and Hort I believe Origen was describing himself..

Lots of people wonder about my reasoning faculties There's a big difference between scribal errors and deliberate altercations. I've never claimed that no translation errors occurred, but I believe scripture has been preserved and the KJV most accurately reflects a word-for-word translation of the manuscripts. The Alexandrian manuscripts (Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus) were corrupted imo. The Vaticanus & Sinaiticus both leave out the last 12 verses of Mark, but no other manuscripts leave that passage out. The Vaticanus and Sinaiticus disagree with each other over 3000 times in the gospels alone, so its no surprise that both codex's also omit the story of the adulterous woman in John 8. The Sinaiticus is a manuscript found in 1844 in a trash pile at St. Catherine's Monastery near Mt. Sinai. There's a good reason it was in a pile of trash.. Examination of the manuscript itself shows the Sinaiticus is extremely unreliable and was corrected by 10 different scribes in the 6th-7th century. I read the KJV, so I obviously subscribe to the Textus Receptus which was derived from the Byzantine manuscripts. Ninety percent of the 5400 Greek manuscripts come from Byzantine text, so I recognized that not all are 100% identical, but show me how that equates to "altered"? Show me where any textual variant affects any doctrine?